Greater availability, easier access to drugs in home may be to blame, researchers suggest.

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FRIDAY, Sept.
16 (HealthDay News) — Despite ongoing prevention
efforts, a growing number of young children are being accidentally poisoned with medications,
according to new research.

The study, which was based
on data reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers between
2001 and 2008, found that medication poisoning among children aged 5 and under
increased by 22 percent, although the number of children in the United States
in this age group rose by only 8 percent during the study period.

"The problem of
pediatric poisoning in the U.S. is getting worse, not better," Dr. Randall
Bond, of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, said in a hospital news
release.

In conducting the study,
which is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Pediatrics,
the researchers reviewed information on over 544,000 children who landed in the
emergency department due to medication poisoning over the course of the
seven-year study period.

The vast majority (95 percent) of
emergency department visits were the result of self-ingestion (the kids took
the medicine themselves by accident), the investigators found. Prescription
drugs were involved in 55 percent of the emergency visits, 76 percent of the
hospitalizations and 71 percent of significant injuries.

Opioid-containing pain
medications (such as morphine, codeine and oxycodone), as well as muscle
relaxants, sleeping pills and heart medications had the biggest impact, the study authors noted in
the news release.

The researchers suggested
that the reason for the trend is likely due to greater availability and easier
access to medications in children's homes. They also noted that
"poison-proofing" efforts, such as safe
guards on packaging and child-proofing in the home, may have declined
in recent years.

"Prevention efforts of
parents and caregivers to store medicines in locked cabinets or up and away
from children continue to be crucial. However, the largest potential benefit
would come from packaging design changes that reduce the quantity a child could
quickly and easily access in a self-ingestion episode, like flow restrictors on
liquids and one-at-a-time tablet dispensing containers," said Bond.

He added that these types
of changes should apply to both pediatric and adult prescription and
over-the-counter medications.

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